Apple Explains More B2B Development Strategy at WWDC

NEWS ANALYSIS: Apple has been moving into the enterprise realm for years, and WWDC is emphasizing that strategy in much more depth than it has in the past.

News-wise, Apple had been relatively quiet for about a year until June 13, or Day 1 of its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Oh, there had been incremental updates of the iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch and iPad during the last 12 months, but the deluge of new information released here made it clear that the company had been saving up a heck of a lot of new-product news for firehose release.
WWDC is for developers, but it is certainly not aimed only at those who specialize in consumer-facing apps, such as iMessage, Photos, Home and Music. Apple has been moving slowly and carefully into the enterprise realm for years, and this conference is emphasizing that strategy in much more depth than it has in past years.
Apple's idea, and it is showing this in abundance this week, is to connect dots everywhere in its product line and use a common programming language, Swift, to do it. Siri, for one well-known example, will be available on just about every device it makes. iMessaging is finding new use cases all the time.

New Dev Platforms Being Created

In doing this, the company is creating platforms for IT professionals so they can build upon the aforementioned dots that are being connected this year. In the coming months, Apple will be encouraging third-party developers to build business productivity applications and features for every device it makes, from iPhones, to iPads, to MacBooks, to watches, to Apple TV—and eventually automobiles.

In a summary video at WWDC, Apple did offer a fleeting look at Marty, the driverless Delorean sports car it has been working on, but one had to look carefully and not blink to see it on the reel.
Apple is supplying both the programming language (Swift, see below) and its native file system (Apple File System) to connect all those dots and provide the framework for future development at Apple.
It is refreshing, interesting and potentially very fruitful for the development community to see companies such as Microsoft and now Apple open their kimonos to offer inside access to previously tightly locked apps such as Siri, iMessage, Maps and others. Realistically, building an outside community of developers for such fiscally potent products was the only way they were going to continue to grow their power and influence in the IT development world. It's just too bad it took so long for this all to happen.
Meanwhile, let's get back to WWDC 2016. Here are highlights from the show specially aimed at enterprise developers.

Swift, the Foundational Code

Swift, the programming language Apple introduced at its Watch launch in 2014, was released to open source in February—one of the smartest things a smart company like Apple has done in recent years. It will continue to play a hugely important part of the continued development of Apple products way into the future.
This week at WWDC, the company announced that it is going all in to make Swift a staple of computer science education, starting as early as elementary school. It has put together an entire instructional program, called Swift Playground, for young coders on how to write and use the language in making simple applications. Kids interested in CS will find the wizard-like interface fun to use because it keeps their attention and explains the coding function very clearly and intelligently.
On the immediate enterprise side, IBM, for one household-name company, has gone all out for Swift. It already has built and is using more than 100 enterprise applications on it and has assembled a new toolkit (IBM Cloud Tools for Swift) for third-party developers in its BlueMix cloud. IBM Vice-President of Enterprise Mobile Development Phil Buckellew described Swift as "a game-changer for enterprises. Swift is well on its way to becoming a first-class language for enterprise use," he wrote in his blog.
Developers eWEEK interviewed at WWDC to a man agree with Buckellew, and many say they've been using it for a year or more in their daily builds and tests. Swift is a versatile language, simpler than most code to use and test, and offers great potential for cross-platform development tasks.

macOS Sierra

Apple made of the biggest improvements to macOS in years—including changing the name from OSX (which it had for 15 years).
One of the most important improvements will be the addition of Siri and the voice control she brings with her brand of artificial intelligence to users. Continuity with other Apple devices is also a huge new improvement.
Auto Unlock, in which the Mac recognizes its user immediately, enables users to open their Macs in seconds rather than having to physically log in to authenticate. Universal Clipboard, which received an ovation from the WWDC audience when it was introduced, allows users to transfer documents, photos, videos and other content through iCloud from device to device automatically—a very useful feature for business users.
Optimized Storage solves the problem of filled up local storage by automatically storing older content in iCloud. Everything not stored on the device becomes easily available on demand. In effect, this becomes limitless data storage.
"These are black and white features, not shades of gray, that dramatically impact the user experience," analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategies said. "Auto Unlock with Watch and Apple Pay on the Web are huge, because they change what many of us do every day on our PCs or Macs—that is, to log in and buy things.
"With Optimized Storage, Apple may have finally gotten cloud storage right and will be better positioned to compete with Microsoft and Google. If the service works as reliably and as quickly as what they showed on stage (during the June 13 kickoff keynote), this could drive many consumers to even reconsider a Mac. Once people let this feature settle in, the more fanfare it will get," he said.